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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24414052">London Calling</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheeryKralie/pseuds/Caz'>Caz (CheeryKralie)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Asexual Character, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), M/M, Misuse of Beholding Powers, Porn With Plot, adventures in the martin harm dimension, canon-typical sturm und drang, elias and martin do not interact in this but boy is martin mad at him regardless</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:54:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,571</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24414052</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheeryKralie/pseuds/Caz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin moves the pad of his thumb across Jon’s cheek, quieting him, a gesture so tender that Jon’s guilty heart hurts. “I mean –– here,” he says. “Right now. This moment, in this room. What’s wrong?”</p><p>“I want us to have sex,” says Jon.</p><p> </p><p>Alternate title: Ring ring ring ring ring Jonahphone</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>295</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>London Calling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So in this fic consent is freely given, but it’s not in a fantastically healthy context and it involves some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it internalised aphobia. The fic also portrays some suicidal ideation. So please be aware of that, if either of those is something you’d rather not read.</p><p>I took so long to write this that it no longer really fits into canon, but catch that stopping me :)c</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There is a black, shuddering carpet of flies, and they cover the little cabin like a shroud. But the cabin is unlike any other place they’ve desecrated in this new world, and despite all their buzzing and scratching, they remain outside its walls. They multiply and persevere. They lay, die, grow, and lay again. They press their fetid mouthparts to the windows, leaving snail-trails of yellowed saliva behind on the glass. Looking for a weak spot. Looking for an entrance. </p><p>They haven’t found one yet, but the glass reverberates with the hum of their wings, and the walls with the hum of thousands more unseen. Before they came, there was howling wind and howling voices, the one seamless from the other. When they move on, the howling will be audible again.</p><p>This is the way it goes.</p><p>Some time before the flies, the cabin’s inhabitants were assaulted by the Dark: blackness which fell across their safehouse with a physical weight, drawing light greedily from the windows and consuming it. They could see up to the limits of their cabin but absolutely no further, the boundary between sacred and unprotected ground marked sharply by a darkness so complete that it didn’t leave space even for shadows. The darkness of a midnight sea with no moon and no shore. The darkness of space after every corpse-light of a distant star has finally been snuffed out.</p><p>In that darkness, the cabin’s inhabitants heard a man moving, calling for help. His footsteps were stumbling and slow, one foot barely landing in front of the other, nearly rooted in place with the fear of what he might encounter if he tripped and fell. His calls were short and sharp, the kind you might hope to hear echoing back on yourself: giving you some bearings, some sense of the landscape around you, anything. But that would have been too much like sight, and his calls fell lifeless in front of him. He took a long time to move past the cabin, and longer still for his calls to fade into the hungry background of the landscape.</p><p>“...Jon?”</p><p><em> Who–– </em> </p><p>It’s Martin’s voice. It’s Martin.</p><p>Jon comes back to himself. He comes back to his own mind, thick with a dark buzzing that isn’t only from the flies coating the window. He comes back to the claustrophobic living room, and to the book in his hands: a whimsical detective novel that Martin picked out for him, of which he has failed to take in a single word. </p><p>It’s a library book. If days still passed in any reasonably chronological way, it would probably be overdue. There are shards of the plastic dust-cover under his nails where he’s been picking it; Jon picks unconsciously when he’s stressed, at his nails (already bitten), at his skin (already ruined) and now at this. It’s an anxious habit, which, in the new and broken world, makes it simply a habit.</p><p>There is no library any more. Where it used to stand is now a chasm, which opened underneath it and swallowed it and snapped closed like an enormous mouth; the jaw now sits half-slack at the surface, inviting, lined with rubble and twisted pipe that look just a little too much like teeth. Deep in its gullet are the walls and the shelves, and the computers and the books, and the twisted limbs and faces of eight people who were working and visiting on a late autumn morning. Not one of them is dead.</p><p>Jon doesn’t ask to know this, but he knows it anyway. He stares hard at Martin’s face, trying to anchor himself in the real world instead of giving in and spreading out under the knowing like a lizard soaking in the sun. </p><p>The things he knows are, objectively, horrible. </p><p>He is, objectively, <em> monstrous </em> for having to put so much effort into not liking them.</p><p>“Jon? Are you okay?” says Martin, doing a poor job of not sounding worried, but a passable job at dragging Jon back into the cabin.</p><p>“Ah… more or less,” says Jon. He’s too bad of a liar to say ‘yes’ –– in the present circumstances, the best liar in the world couldn’t get away with a ‘yes’ –– but the last thing he wants is to make Martin more anxious. </p><p>Martin’s silence seems to invite him to say more, so he adds: “I’m enjoying the book.”</p><p>Martin’s face relaxes into a faint, fond smile. “Jon, you’ve been on the same page for the past hour.”</p><p>“I –– have I?”</p><p>He’s about to apologise, aware –– of all the things to be aware of in this moment –– that it’s Martin’s book he’s been ignoring, and feeling rather wretched. But then Martin comes and sits down next to him on the sofa, sinking onto the cushions, and puts his hand softly on Jon’s back. Jon, who’s been sitting ramrod straight on the edge of the sofa, shifts and fidgets into Martin’s touch.</p><p>Martin’s here. Jon, too, is here. <em> Here </em> is no longer a perfectly definite place; but still, he’s in it, anchored there by Martin’s strong hand. He wishes this could be what Martin intends it to be: a quiet moment in the middle of the howling storm of fear.</p><p>“Were you,” says Martin, “doing the…”</p><p>He puts his free hand to his temple, makes a vaguely spooky noise, and then waves it around in an absolutely terrible impression of Beholding.</p><p>“...thing, again?”</p><p>Jon looks down, which is really the same as admitting to it.</p><p>“I think I have it under control,” he says, unable to say honestly that he’s certain he does, but wanting to say something. “But it’s… the whole world, Martin. The whole world is twisting and shuddering in fear and I…”</p><p>He trails off; he can’t finish that sentence out loud.</p><p>
  <em> I caused it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I can see it. </em>
</p><p><em> I </em> <b> <em>like</em> </b> <em> it. </em></p><p>What’s more, he gets the sense that if he walked out of that cabin door, he’d be able to see it all so much more clearly –– up close –– see the details, the sick little individual strings of fear that tangle together to make wholes. He feels like there <em> must </em> be somewhere else out there that still exists in any real sense; that if he went far enough, he’d find a place that grants him an unrestricted view of the world as it is now.</p><p>He more than feels it. Let’s call it what it is: he <em> knows </em> it, it’s been spoken to him without words, and now it lives in his brain as certainly as if he’d seen proof of it himself.</p><p>The idea filters through to him more and more frequently, more than just knowledge: a temptation. An invitation. But whether that invitation comes from the Ceaseless Watcher, or from Jonah himself, Jon stubbornly refuses to know, just as he refuses to leave the cabin on their terms. He’s had quite enough of falling into traps.</p><p><em> Still, though. </em> The idea preys on his mind, as much as he tries to ignore it. There’s a feast of pain and terror and misery out there.</p><p>He could see it all with such clarity if he only stepped out of the door and began to walk south.</p><p>Martin, who has no idea of the sick things bouncing around in Jon’s head, takes his hand and gently squeezes it. He rests his head against Jon’s with solid, welcome weight, murmuring words of reassurance that Jon doesn’t deserve.</p><p>Beholding’s power can’t tell the future; the Eye doesn’t deal in hypotheticals. But Jon the person, if there is such a thing any more, knows with the certainty of a guilty conscience that Martin can only bear to look at him or touch him because he doesn’t know what’s going through his mind.</p><p>He hopes against hope that Martin will never ask. Jon’s a bad liar when not just talking to himself, and there’s so, so much in his head, clawing at the root of his tongue to get out.</p><p> </p><p>--------</p><p> </p><p>If there’s anything that Jon can always see clearly, it’s Martin.</p><p>This is not as much of a blessing as it might be.</p><p>It’s not night –– day and night didn’t survive the change –– but it’s later. Martin is sleeping; he’s dreaming. And Jon feels like a vulture, sitting up but hunched over in their bed, sleepless and ever-hungry.</p><p>It’s not a happy dream. It would be satisfying, for a little while, though for all the constant input Jon never seems to feel truly fully <em> satisfied</em>. He grits his teeth and tries to think about –– about tea, or books, about normal things. Knowing the pain of strangers in the intimate detail that he does is bad enough, but Martin should be… beyond that, somehow, surely. Out of bounds.</p><p>But Martin’s pain is brightness without light, noise without sound, and it draws Jon out of his body and into someone else’s eyes as surely as any statement would have done in the old world.</p><p>It’s a dream about Martin’s mother.</p><p>She didn’t live to see the apocalypse, but even in a world ruled by the fears, she still looms large enough to show up in his nightmares sometimes. In this dream, she’s the one who casts him into the Lonely, a look of disgust on her face; the scene repeats over and over, like a thought that spirals round and round the mind. Martin spends the dream crying and pleading and, in the most traumatic loops, intimidating her; but no matter what his unconscious mind comes up with, he always ends the dream surrounded by mist and soaked to the bones in despair.</p><p>Jon doesn’t want to watch this, much more sincerely than he didn’t want to see the library or the larvae or the man in the dark. He doesn’t want to watch Martin’s fears overwhelm him every time he falls asleep. But there’s a door open in his mind, and the ocean that was behind it now flows freely through; he can no more not <em> see </em> than he can jump into the real ocean and not get wet.</p><p>He deserves this. The unrelenting, overwhelming pressure of Seeing, which at its worst drives visions into his mind like a thousand sharpened nails. The pain of Beholding that splits him from the inside when he tries not to speak aloud the things he knows. He deserves it all because of the <em> reason </em> he doesn’t want to watch Martin afraid; because of the <em> reason </em> he tries so hard to look away.</p><p>It’s curling through him now as he watches and does nothing. The sweet satisfaction.</p><p>Martin deserves better than that.</p><p><em> If it’s just that it’s Martin</em>, a thought comes unbidden, <em> if that’s the problem, then you could leave. Walk the earth. Go south. Absorb it all without guilt. </em></p><p>That invitation again, the joined hands of temptation and obsession both beckoning to Jon in his mind. He’s so suffused in the flavour of Martin’s nightmare that the summons on top of it, with all its promises, is almost physically painful. He’s not prepared, he has no anchor; it knocks his feet out from under him. He thinks of men drawn from their beds by the silent call of a coffin, of children caught in fantasy beckoned to knock on a very real door. He thinks of something else too, but he can’t quite describe it, except as a deep ache of deja vu.</p><p>
  <em> Go south and become a vessel that fear pours into like wine. Let it fill you up. Enjoy it. </em>
</p><p>His nerves are singing. His bare feet touch the floor.</p><p>“Jon?” says Martin behind him, quiet and afraid.</p><p>He goes still with his palms on the edge of the mattress, halfway through the act of standing. The room is there around him but it seems to pulse, unreal.</p><p>“I’m here,” he says.</p><p>Martin makes a noise of relief, and worms his way across the bed to pull sleepily at the back of Jon’s nightshirt. “Where y’going?”</p><p>Jon doesn’t know how to answer that. Martin’s hand is pulling him back, but the whole weight of wanting to see is pulling him forward, and he’s trembling like a tree that doesn’t know which way it will break.</p><p>“You were having a nightmare,” he says instead.</p><p>Martin does the hard work of making that part of the conversation instead of a disconnected sentence. “Was it that obvious?” he mumbles. “Got… weird, I think. Did you wake me up?”</p><p>Jon physically clenches his teeth against the hum of words that strain to tumble out of him: words about the tendrils of the Lonely; words about the look on Martin’s mother’s face, the hatred that follows Martin like a ghost; words about the shimmering peak of Martin’s terror in the dream-loop in which he hit her. Words that pin open and admire the fear and resentment he holds for his father: the fear of <em> what ifs</em>, of what if it was different, of what if he didn’t have his father’s face. The <em> clarity </em> of it all.</p><p>Words about the journey south laid out for Jon like a trail of breadcrumbs, to the place where everything is just as plain to see. About the desire that idea inflicts on him, the energy jolting through his body.</p><p>He mustn’t follow it. He might never come back.</p><p>“What are you looking at?” asks Martin after several seconds, letting go of Jon’s pyjamas and shifting about behind him. He seems to be waking up quickly, and he’s picked up that Jon is still half-standing, that he hasn’t turned around to face him.</p><p>“Not as much as I can,” says Jon, “and both more and less than I would like.”</p><p>And he wants, he wants, he <em> wants. </em></p><p>Without warning, strong warm arms curl round his chest and pull him onto the bed. He lands on his back with a small gasp, and finds Martin’s hands on either side of him, Martin’s broad chest above him, Martin’s face blinking at him in the half-darkness of the bedroom.</p><p>“That sounds like a spooky thing,” says Martin, mildly disapproving.</p><p>Sudden as the snapping of a branch, Jon surges forwards.</p><p>Martin makes a noise of astonishment as their lips meet and their teeth clack together, and Jon isn’t sure where he’s going with this; he’s only sure that he’s going <em> somewhere</em>, and that it should probably be into the arms of Martin, whose form is still surrounded and highlighted by the coiling shreds of his nightmare.</p><p>He kisses Martin fiercely, as if that will expend his need to go forward, to move. Martin pulls back for just a second, his surprised eyes searching Jon’s face, making sure it’s all right.</p><p>“Oh!” he says, equally surprised and pleased, and he’s so charming that Jon could almost believe it really <em> is </em> all right.</p><p>Then Martin kisses him back with feeling. One of his hands goes to Jon’s cheek, and the other to the back of his head, tangling in his hair; Jon’s own hands snatch at Martin’s t-shirt, at his shoulders, at his face. Martin’s mouth, his tongue attacking Jon’s, is at once invasive and reassuring. Martin kisses him like somebody who loves him.</p><p>Martin, who deserves the world and yet is saddled with the part of it that is Jon, kisses him.</p><p>Jon doesn’t regret not having more sex in his life, not specifically, but he does regret not having more experiences. There’s a lot he doesn’t know, and Martin only represents a fraction of that unknown. But even then, Martin has several distinct kisses, identifiable from deep and heated to chaste and comforting, and Jon wants to experience them all. And if he’s had them all already, he’ll learn them again. Trapped with only one beloved book, he will read it over and over again until he knows every page by heart.</p><p>That's not his nature, but he’ll make it his nature for Martin’s sake. Martin, who kisses him like somebody who loves him, and whose kisses are described and catalogued neatly in the ledger of Jon’s mind as he kisses him back.</p><p>
  <em> It’s not enough, though, is it? </em>
</p><p>That’s not his own thought in his head. It’s the fish-hook that’s caught there, the line pulled tight. </p><p>There’s a knowing smugness to it. He doesn’t have to ask whose; he knows that smugness intimately.</p><p>Jon realises he’s frozen in place when Martin pulls back. He feels Martin’s fears before he sees his actual expression. They're not fresh, but like small wounds that reopen again and again, growing more ragged and sore over time. Fear of rejection, isolation, loss. Fear for Jon’s own well-being. Wounds that had begun to heal, before the world-as-it-was ended, and the world-as-it-is came to pick and worry at every fear at once.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” says Martin, his concern like a melody.</p><p>“That, ah… that’s a big question,” says Jon, who can be truthful without being unnecessarily specific. Further truths fight for his tongue, tasting of faraway suffering, but they move and part before another invasive thought like fish before a shark. The thought is this: <em> when you grow bored of him, you will come to me. </em></p><p>Jon breathes in sharply, a denial.</p><p>Martin moves the pad of his thumb across Jon’s cheek, quieting him, a gesture so tender that Jon’s guilty heart hurts. “I mean –– here,” he says. “Right now. This moment, in this room. What’s wrong?”</p><p>“I want us to have sex,” says Jon.</p><p>Now it’s Martin’s turn to go still, and he looks at Jon with obvious confusion, as if he’s just derailed the entire conversation –– which, Jon supposes, he has.</p><p>“What? You –– really?”</p><p>“Yes,” says Jon.</p><p>He’s thought about it several times, though only before the world ended. And Martin has suggested it before, shyly, sometimes indirectly, dancing around Jon’s boundaries in an attempt to learn where they lay. </p><p>And yet they have never had sex. They’ve been intimate, yes –– Jon has curled against the pillow of Martin’s bare chest; he’s lain with Martin’s body against his back and Martin’s arms wound protectively around him; he’s sat with Martin’s head in his lap, and stroked his face as if allowed to touch a priceless treasure. But they haven’t had sex.</p><p>Jon supposes he was waiting to feel desire. If he was, then he didn’t learn much from his relationship with Georgie: desire doesn’t come just because you wish it would. He’s absolutely been curious about sex with Martin, but the act of curiosity is tainted now by the awful thing that observes them both. Jon wanted to offer something more than that. Something closer to what Martin offers him.</p><p>But maybe curiosity is all he could ever offer anyone. <em>That would</em> <em>be fitting</em>, he thinks, with resentment.</p><p>“Right now?” says Martin, still trying to move forward without misstep.</p><p>“Why,” says Jon, “do you have somewhere else to be?”</p><p>“It’s just sudden, is all,” says Martin. “Are you absolutely sure? I –– I’m not saying I don’t want to, I do, but that was –– abrupt? And I thought you didn’t –– you know you don’t have to do that for me. I only want to if you want to, for yourself.”</p><p>“Yes,” says Jon. To all of it. It’s about the only word he feels he can manage with his mind already so full of them. Any more and they’d come tumbling out, and he doesn’t know if he’d be able to stop them.</p><p>Martin smiles at him, first uncertainly, then shyly, then with excitement.</p><p>“Cool,” he says. “Right! Yeah! No time like the present.”</p><p>Before Jon can remind him that there isn’t really any time at all any more, Martin leans down and captures him in another kiss: this one is lingering, exploratory. Jon pulls Martin’s hands to his nightshirt, impatient to get to something new, something to quiet the cackling in his brain. He leans forward, lifting his thin torso up from the mattress, and raises his arms to let Martin pull the shirt off over his head.</p><p>“You’re so handsome,” says Martin, which isn’t true at all, though Jon appreciates the effort.</p><p>“It’s dark in here,” he grumbles, dodging the compliment with practiced ease. He lies back down on the bed, watching Martin loom over him.</p><p>“I can see you just fine,” says Martin, smiling. “And I already knew you were handsome.”</p><p>“You clearly have dreadful taste,” drawls Jon. It’s part of the dance they do around each other, though this time the dance will be going further than before. Despite the wretchedness he feels at being so much less than Martin deserves, Jon’s heart quickens at that prospect. At the imminent crossing of a new frontier.</p><p>Martin ducks his head and kisses Jon’s nipple, and then, at Jon’s little gasp, he mouths it and grins against his pockmarked chest.</p><p>“Guess my bad taste works out in your favour, huh?”</p><p>Jon expects Martin to move to his boxers immediately, assuming he’ll be impatient after waiting for so long; but Martin remains at his torso, kissing and sucking at Jon’s nipple until it’s small and raised. He glances up to meet Jon’s eyes, and Jon watches him intently as he moves to the other nipple, gently circling the first with his fingers.</p><p>It mostly feels –– odd, though not unpleasant, a little like scratching an itch. The nipple is famously over-encumbered with nerve endings, and at some point in the past Jon has experimented with exploring his own, though not in company. He rather thinks that people who are obsessed with having them touched might be putting it on.</p><p>“Do you like that?” murmurs Martin, looking up at him again.</p><p>“It’s… all right,” says Jon.</p><p>Martin doesn’t seem put off in the slightest by his lukewarm enthusiasm. “Well, I did,” he says. “You’re just –– so sexy, Jon.” Those words in that order are baffling to Jon’s ears, but Martin continues, solicitous. “What do you want me to do?”</p><p>“Ah…” Jon stammers for a few moments. He hadn’t been expecting to have to give instructions. He stands by the opinion that sex would be much more appealing if everyone started out knowing what to do and got on with it.</p><p>“It’s okay if you don’t know,” says Martin, the pleased expression not leaving his face. “I can think of a few things.”</p><p>“I want to see what you do,” says Jon.</p><p>Martin <em> hmm</em>s in his throat, and kisses Jon’s torso again, shifting on the bed to move down towards his stomach. Jon props his head up on one hand to keep watching. His breathing is shallow, mostly from nervousness. He wonders if Martin’s trail of kisses will avoid his scars, those pink-and-white reminders of the time when dozens of worms tried to make a hive out of him; but Martin is unreserved in loving him, and makes a point of kissing each raised mark as if to prove that they won’t frighten him away.</p><p>When Martin nips gently at one of them, it sends a small jolt through Jon, and he tenses and catches his breath. Martin looks up at him, concerned.</p><p>“Did that hurt?”</p><p>Jon shakes his head.</p><p>Martin brings his hand to the scar, and runs a finger gently around its circumference, still looking at Jon’s face. Jon watches his finger, tense and fascinated.</p><p>“Is it sensitive?” asks Martin.</p><p>“Ah –– ah, yes, it does seem to be,” says Jon, and he wonders when <em> that </em> happened. There was certainly nothing enjoyable about those wounds when he was having to change bandages and worry about infection. Nor even after they’d healed, when he would examine them with his hands, fastidious and paranoid. Perhaps the variables of this situation are different enough to warrant ––</p><p>Martin lowers his head and sucks on the marked skin, kneading it with his teeth. Jon makes a noise in his throat and says, “Oh.”</p><p>Martin smirks at him. “Well, that’s not nothing.”</p><p>“I, ah, right,” says Jon, and he clears his throat, flustered by the slip in his own composure. </p><p>Then Martin moves up his body again, to the longer scar where Michael stabbed him what seems like a lifetime ago. “How about this one?” he murmurs, and he tongues the raised pink tissue, nibbles along the whole length of it; and Jon trembles and makes another involuntary sound. It’s like a shower of pins and needles, just on the pleasurable side of hurting. He moves his hands to loosely grasp the air, trying to acknowledge every detail of what Martin’s doing and how it feels.</p><p>He went looking for something new to know, and he certainly seems to have found it.</p><p>“Wow,” says Martin, and his voice is inexplicably husky, even though all Jon has done is lie there and moan a little. “I’d love to hear you make more noises like that.”</p><p>Jon stares up at him, his cheeks hot. The outside thoughts still pull at him, trying to capture his attention, but he does his best to focus instead on Martin: on Martin’s reassuring weight above him; on Martin’s hands, one warm on his skin, one dimpling the mattress at his side; on Martin’s very real face, not the ghost of a face far away.</p><p>He’s being so gentle, even though Jon knows there’s a fair amount of strength in those hands.</p><p>“Thought of anything you’d like?” Martin asks him in a low voice.</p><p>Jon’s more prepared this time, though he still stammers his answer: not because he’s unsure what things he likes, but because he’s deeply unused to asking for them out loud. </p><p>“I –– ah –– I think –– you could –– manhandle me. A little.”</p><p>“A little?” Martin murmurs.</p><p>“I… more than a little.” Jon tries to rally himself. This isn’t an inherently embarrassing thing he’s asking for; and he does, he reminds himself, trust Martin. </p><p>Martin, whose thoughts bloom with arousal at Jon’s request: not because he wants to be rough with him, but because he’s fantasised about hearing Jon moan and beg for him in bed, and imagined the depraved things he would ask for. That’s — hm. Jon looks away from Martin’s mind — he hadn’t even really intended to read it — but the idea remains within him, prickling just under his skin.</p><p>Martin nuzzles at his collarbone, and Jon lifts his head to allow him room, wondering at the contradiction that is the feeling of safe vulnerability. He swallows. Martin kisses the swell of his Adam’s apple.</p><p>“Anything else…?”</p><p>“I, ah…” Jon hesitates.</p><p>Martin squeezes his hand reassuringly; then, with surprising speed and unsurprising strength, he grasps Jon’s wrists and pins him heavily to the bed. As if shocked by electricity, Jon arches his back, pushing straight up into the other half of the trap: Martin’s mouth on his throat, tonguing and sucking at the place where Daisy cut him with a knife long ago. Jon’s embryonic answer comes out as a keening sound; and in an unexpected turn of events, he can feel himself starting to get hard.</p><p>He wants to throw it in the face of the distant man watching from his tower. <em> See, </em> he wants to shout, <em> he can surprise me</em>. </p><p>There’s an answer waiting for him, but he looks away from it and concentrates on Martin, and on the sensations coiling through his own body. Jon’s face is still tilted up towards the ceiling, but he’s acutely aware of Martin’s weight on his wrists and over his legs; of the movements of Martin’s skin against his own.</p><p>Martin comes up for air, his cheeks pink with enjoyment. “You, ah?” he teases.</p><p>“I — I don’t know. I…”</p><p>“Do you want to keep going?”</p><p>“Yes,” says Jon immediately, “<em>yes.</em>”</p><p>Martin ducks to kiss his chest again; Jon’s hands roam over his shoulders, pluck at the t-shirt he was sleeping in. “Let me see you,” he says, and together they pull the shirt over his head; Jon flings it to the ground, then returns his hands greedily to Martin’s body.</p><p>With one hand tight in Jon’s hair, Martin guides his head up and kisses his mouth, and Jon makes a noise and opens to meet him. The ease of it is a relief. As curious as he is, he wasn’t sure how he would physically respond; whether this quest for new experience would be enjoyable or just tolerable. It’s one of the many reasons he and Georgie never made it, back in the day: he was uneasy with his own unreliable libido, and he hid it behind a conviction that Georgie was exaggerating her own. In a million ways, he wasn’t very good to her. He’s never been a very good person.</p><p>Carefully, Martin lowers Jon’s head, propping himself up on his elbow to free his other hand. Still kissing him, still holding him in place by his hair, Martin’s hand trails down Jon’s body. He stops at the band of his underwear, just to feel Jon tremble when he does.</p><p>Jon makes an impatient noise, the interrupted anticipation of touch getting the better of him. Martin grins against his mouth.</p><p>“Is there a problem?”</p><p>Jon splutters. “I –– no! Why would there be a…”</p><p>“Just making sure,” says Martin, and he starts to slide down Jon’s body, a rather discomfiting smile on his face. He kisses the soft part of Jon’s belly, nibbling at the scars again as Jon tries and fails to hold himself still; he kisses the soft trail of hair that leads down and disappears under fabric. Then he nuzzles his way across that fabric, and again Jon expects to be touched, but instead Martin makes a wide circle around his cock and kisses the skin of his inner thigh.</p><p>“What are you doing.” Jon’s voice is huskier than usual, and he’s not entirely sure he likes how revealing that is –– though if Martin stays where he is he won’t have any trouble gauging Jon’s excitement, voice or not.</p><p>“What do you mean, what am I doing?” says Martin, sounding anything but innocent. He nips at a scar high on Jon’s thigh, and Jon bucks involuntarily. Without even trying, he can see Martin’s excitement cartwheel through his head.</p><p>“You –– <em> nnh </em> –– you <em> know </em> what I mean.”</p><p>“Nope,” says Martin, “no idea.” And he kisses his way right into the juncture of Jon’s hip, pulling up his boxers to push his nose into the thicker hair that grows there.</p><p>It must smell unpleasant, Jon assumes; it’s not even necessarily an erogenous zone. Unable to understand the appeal, Jon looks at Martin’s mind instinctively: it’s a mess of desire, of self-control, of the image of Jon squirming beneath him. The image of himself doesn’t rouse much more than feelings of distaste, but the thoughts that surround it in Martin’s mind certainly do: there are countless things that Martin wants to do to him, fantasies tempered and detailed over time. It’s far more potent than he’s used to, and he finds himself pushing up from the bed again with a gasp, even as he’s appalled by his own reaction.</p><p>“You’re eager,” says Martin, in a voice that comes from very deep in his throat.</p><p>Jon attempts to give an intelligent reply, even as he detangles himself from the moving parts of Martin’s imagination. He fails. </p><p>“I… um…”</p><p>Martin cuts him off with great efficiency by mouthing his cock through his underwear.</p><p>Jon bites down on his hand to stifle his own whine, his hips jerking up from the bed again. All Martin’s teasing wasn’t for nothing, and even that slight touch sends shocks through his body, settling low in his gut.</p><p>It seems that this is the point where Martin’s self control runs out. He takes the waistband of Jon’s boxer shorts and pulls them unceremoniously down, leaving Jon’s cock exposed, almost fully hard. Jon is light, and barely has to help as Martin moves him around. He swallows, fighting self-consciousness. </p><p>Then Martin mouths again at the head of his cock; he takes the whole thing hungrily into his mouth, swallowing around it, and the self-consciousness is dashed out of Jon’s head.</p><p>He actually stops consciously cataloguing for a moment, as his body shakes and moves under Martin’s mouth. It’s warm and slick, and he must be doing something with his tongue; Jon’s hips thrust up again, and Martin’s hands come down roughly on them, holding him still with a grip that’s sure to leave marks. Forcing him to take this at Martin’s pace. Martin hums around his cock and moves his head in an unhurried rhythm, his mind full of long-awaited enjoyment.</p><p>The experience is wholly, categorically different from any of the purely functional wanks that Jon has had in recent years –– though that was rather the point of this whole exercise, so he shouldn’t be so surprised.</p><p>Martin releases his cock –– prompting a small whine from Jon –– only to mouth at its root and then its head, his tongue seeking out the slit at its very tip. Jon half-stifles a groan, and notes with interest his own desire for this to go even further –– not simply for the sake of information, but out of <em> want</em>. He wants more of Martin’s mouth, wants Martin to pull him helplessly across the bed, wants to feel Martin’s fingers inside him.</p><p>He’s sure to overthink it, of course, and spoil his own moment. It wouldn’t be the first time. It would almost be karmic: the idea that he, Jon, should get to enjoy himself, shielded from the consequences of everything he’s done, is absurd. Perverse. But he wants, so much, to lose himself to Martin. He wants to feel something good without reservation, even if he could never deserve to.</p><p>“God, Martin…” Fighting to keep down his own walls, Jon gets an entire halfway into a request before he second-guesses himself. “I –– I want –– ah, um…”</p><p>Martin hums a question around the head of his cock, and Jon’s breath skips, but he can’t force out the words he needs to continue.</p><p>Martin lifts his head, then licks his thumb and presses it onto the tip of Jon’s cock. For a moment everything focuses sharply on that touch, driving words even further away from him.</p><p>“You want what?” says Martin. He starts to move his thumb in little circles. Jon doesn’t have to look into his head to see how much he enjoys having Jon at his mercy like this. And Jon, in turn, is helpless under Martin, and he imagines this going on for hours; imagines being able only to watch as he’s forced to greater and greater heights, his body completely under Martin’s control. His fists tangle and tighten in the duvet.</p><p>“M-Martin…”</p><p>Martin swallows, his own breathing unsteady; he spits in his palm and rewards Jon with a long, slow stroke of his cock. His hand leaves shuddering trails of sensation in its wake that make Jon’s hips buck, and he’s not even sure this time that he wants to stop them.</p><p>“Yes, Jon?” Martin asks sweetly.</p><p>“I, I… I…”</p><p>“You’re making very nice noises for me,” says Martin. It sends a spark through Jon’s body, and his breath comes out rougher. God, it’s like Martin is <em> trying </em>to sabotage him.</p><p>“Well, yes, obviously,” says Jon, trying for deadpan, “because you keep — <em> a-aah…</em>”</p><p>Martin’s hand squeezes, interrupting him, and at the same time his mouth closes on one of the raised marks on Jon’s torso, and Jon can respond only in syllables.</p><p>“Oh!” says Martin, feigning surprise. “Look at that. I s’pose I do.”</p><p>Jon makes a noise of frustration and tries to lift his hips again, but Martin’s free hand holds him down; he moves his fingers up and down Jon’s cock with agonising gentleness.</p><p>“Ah ah,” Martin says impishly. “You were saying about wanting something?”</p><p>“I, I, I,” says Jon, grasping for the scattered pieces of himself. His tongue loosened, he finally says: “I w— I want you to finger me. Please.”</p><p>Martin catches his breath, then lets it out slowly. “Absolutely,” he says, and his voice is awed. He gives Jon’s cock a couple of faster, rougher strokes, a reward for being so candid, making Jon moan before he has a chance to be embarrassed by his own words.</p><p>“R-right,” says Jon, as he makes a game attempt to get his own breathing — and by extension, his composure — under control. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, he adds: “Ah, how do you want me?”</p><p>Martin considers this for a moment. He lets go of Jon’s cock — Jon manages to keep from whining, but only barely, as his legs twitch at the loss — and strokes the insides of his thighs with a touch that seems to send sparks off his skin.</p><p>“Exactly like this,” says Martin at last, softly. “I — I’d like to see your face.”</p><p>It’s a somewhat intimidating prospect, as Jon isn’t sure exactly what his face will do during the whole process, but he nods.</p><p>“You’re gorgeous,” Martin says softly. Jon resists the urge to protest that he’s anything but, allowing Martin his moment. “Okay, hold — hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”</p><p>“What?” says Jon.</p><p>“Right back,” Martin repeats, climbing heavily off the bed. “Got to get something.” He stands up, and Jon can see that his skin is flushed, and that his cock stands rigid, pushing at the buttoned front of his boxers. Jon finds himself wishing the boxers weren’t part of the picture.</p><p>Then Martin is away, and Jon is afforded a few seconds in which to come back to himself. His world extends again beyond his own and Martin’s bodies; he becomes unwillingly aware of the rest of the room, of its walls, and of the press of misery beyond them. All that distant terror has a subtly different tenor when he sees it while panting, naked, and aroused. And that will go straight on the list of things that he refuses to think about.</p><p>The summons to London remains exactly the same. It has never not held an air of seduction.</p><p>Half-focused, his body humming, Jon finds himself drifting towards that trail in his mind before he remembers why he shouldn’t. No good could come of going there on Jonah’s terms. And yet, what he knows about the destination is tantalising: a place at the centre of the world, its thousand eyes turned outwards, its view panoramic and unparalleled.</p><p>Compared to that promise, the cabin feels too dark, too claustrophobic; Jon is glad when Martin comes back and distracts him from his thoughts.</p><p>In Martin’s hand is a small bottle of lube. Jon raises his eyebrows. Martin blushes.</p><p>“I, um, I got it before the –– well, before,” he says unnecessarily. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you to feel pressured, but I thought, you know, i-if you wanted to then it was there, and if you didn’t then –– then no harm done?”</p><p>“You think of everything,” says Jon, overcome with fondness. Martin grins in relief, and he pumps a viscous glob into his hand. Jon props himself up on his elbows and watches, transfixed, as Martin coats his fingers in the clear lube.</p><p>He makes an extremely handsome sight: tall and soft, standing without his shirt on, his hair messy and his underwear tented. Jon knows that he smells warm and familiar, and that under his chin is a safe place to tuck one’s head. Martin sees him watching, and gives him a slightly embarrassed smile.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Jon stammers, caught red-handed. “I –– I just. You look… good.”</p><p>From the expression on Martin’s face, you’d think it was the greatest compliment anyone had ever paid him. The confidence he’s been projecting gives way, for a moment, to a look of happiness and gratitude.</p><p>“So do you,” he says, and then he approaches the bed with intent.</p><p>Jon feels silly reclining there, naked and leaning on his elbows, undoubtedly looking more comical and pathetic than alluring. He brings his knees up awkwardly as Martin climbs onto the bed, and tries not to let self-consciousness or second-guesses overtake him. It really only takes a few minutes, he thinks, faintly annoyed with himself. Only a few minutes for him to splash the cold water of pessimism all over something good. </p><p>Instead of going straight to business, Martin crawls forward and kisses his mouth, almost shyly. Jon kisses him back and tastes, with the thrill of entering unexplored territory, something that must be himself on Martin’s tongue. His mind spins in circles trying to categorise that, and he anchors a hand on the back of Martin’s head, pulling him closer. He refuses to think this through, for fear of losing it.</p><p>When they have to separate to breathe, he’s left suddenly daring. “I think it’s very unfair,” he says severely, “that you still have any clothes on.”</p><p>“You do, do you?” Martin breathes deeply, and it stands out in his mind that he’s been hoping –– waiting –– for Jon to tell him to finish undressing. He’s even imagined the tone and tenor, both intriguingly similar to the tone and tenor with which Jon might have scolded him at work in their previous lives.</p><p>Well, Jon can certainly do that for him. “So take them off,” he says, conjuring up the sharpness he would usually save for misfiled paperwork. Martin colours, as if he’s about to fight Jon on this, but Jon has already seen in his imagination how he’s going to react. With a muttered <em> yessir</em>, he hurries to pull his boxer shorts off with his un-lubed hand.</p><p>There are a lot more and filthier thoughts in his head than just that, but Jon tries not to see all of them. He doesn’t want to just take these things; he wants to discover them. And, it occurs to him slightly too late, seeing Martin’s fantasies might be considered something of an invasion of privacy. Especially since, well, he hasn’t exactly told Martin that he can read his mind. There’s just never been a good time to give Martin an itemised list of his burgeoning eldritch abilities.</p><p>He looks away from the swirling chorus of fears, hopes, and lusts that is Martin’s thoughts, and looks instead at the pleasing sight that is his body. Light hair trails down from the soft mound of his belly, towards his coarser, darker pubes; his cock stands proud of them, larger than Jon’s. Jon sways towards it, deeply intrigued, the sheer arousal of Martin’s thoughts not unaffecting.</p><p>He sits up, forgetting for the moment what they had planned, reaching instead for Martin’s cock with a sharp interest. It’s warm and dry to the touch, and the foreskin slides smoothly over the shaft underneath when he nudges at it with his fingers. These are all, according to his sample size of one, normal features of a penis; and yet in this context they’re mesmerising. When he pulls the foreskin back, gentle and experimental, he sees the head is slick and flushed. A single bead of white liquid appears at its tip.</p><p>Martin groans deep in his throat, trembling at his touches. “Ah, fuck… Jon…”</p><p>Moving with precision, needing to know, Jon captures Martin’s precum on his fingertip and transfers it to his tongue. It tastes surprisingly strong, unpleasantly salty, interestingly bitter. He files the knowledge safely and leans closer, and Martin shuffles forwards on his knees, his cock bouncing.</p><p>What Jon means to do is take Martin in his mouth, but at the last moment he falters. From further away the idea was appealing, but up close it’s too human: there’s too much thought of what it is and where it’s been to have it somewhere as vulnerable as his mouth, too much smell of sweat and genitals clinging to the hair and skin. Jon hesitates, pulling back slightly and wavering, mouth half-open, caught between his body’s desire and his unhelpful brain.</p><p>“It — it’s okay,” says Martin, “you don’t have to.”</p><p>It’s not as reassuring when Jon can see the unspoken <em> I want you to</em>. “I’m sorry,” he says, feeling the embarrassing weight of his inexperience, “I, ah — I won’t. Not — straight away.”</p><p>“Jon, it’s okay,” says Martin, sinking down to kiss the top of his head. “I love you.”</p><p>“I would like to,” says Jon. And he would, he very much intends to suck Martin off; but it doesn’t have to happen now, not when there are so many possible avenues they can explore. “At some point.”</p><p>He tries to ignore the fact that he’s thinking of this encounter in terms of the new experiences Martin can offer him. That’s not his main motivation here, it’s not — this is more than just a rejection of the summons that sings through his veins and offers all the experiences of the world.</p><p>
  <em> South. In London. So far and so close, for in this new world, miles mean as little as hours.  </em>
</p><p>“You still having fun?” says Martin carefully.</p><p>“I am,” says Jon, shaking off the prying thought, rallying himself. It’s nothing; it would be unusual at this point if his mind <em> weren’t </em>full of the cries of others. “In fact, I’m fairly sure I asked you for something.”</p><p>Martin grins, pleased. “You absolutely did. All right, on your back.”</p><p>His voice is suddenly commanding, and Jon wastes no time in obeying him. Down the cratered plain of his own body, he stares expectantly at Martin, who is now between his knees.</p><p>“Legs up,” says Martin, and Jon raises his tentatively. Martin takes them rather more roughly, pulling them up and onto his shoulders. The movement pulls Jon several abrupt inches towards him, and he lets out an <em> ah </em> from his throat that has nothing to do with alarm. “Good,” says Martin, and Jon’s breath shudders out of him. He feels singly exposed like this, and he has no defence at all when Martin runs slick fingers up the underside of his cock.</p><p>“Ngh— Martin,” he says, and he tries to stay still, even though he knows Martin can feel his calves tensing, can see the movements of his abdominal muscles and the stiffening of his cock.</p><p><em> London</em>, he thinks again, although it’s not him thinking it.</p><p>“Relax, Jon,” says Martin, and Jon does his best. Martin reaches for the bottle again, coating both hands this time. He keeps one gently circling Jon’s cock, while the other slides down cool and slippery over his testicles, his perineum, and finally the tight hole of his anus.</p><p>Having someone else touch him there is the Platonic ideal of unexplored territory for Jon. As a prickly and sexually unadventurous student, he certainly didn’t want Georgie to, and he suspects that she wouldn’t have said yes if he had asked. He shudders, and his entire body lights up with a stinging sort of pleasure, as Martin’s finger nudges into the long ring of muscle and then through it. He breathes in sharply, and lifts his hips despite the awkward angle, trying to encourage Martin deeper.</p><p>“Does that feel good?” says Martin, although he must know the answer.</p><p>The twin sensations of Martin’s hand stroking and squeezing his cock, and Martin’s finger curling inside him, turn Jon’s voice into a desperate whisper. “<em>Yes.</em>”</p><p>“Do you want more?” </p><p>“Please. <em> Please.</em>”</p><p>Martin starts to move his finger steadily in and out of Jon, stretching him just short of enough, and pumping his cock in time; and now Jon has no control at all over the high little noises that leak out of him to the rhythm of Martin’s hands. He’d like nothing more than to be able to push down onto Martin’s hand –– but instead he’s under Martin’s power, and is jostled on the squeaking bed with every thrust.</p><p><em> London</em>, says the obsessive thought. And with his own thoughts cartwheeling, Jon follows its logic for a moment. Because it’s not enough information: it’s not specific enough. <em> Where </em> in London? Well, there’s only one likely answer to that, and asking grants it to him: the Institute, although he can’t see it, not at this distance, not from this place.</p><p>For what <em> reason</em>, though? Just to gloat? Or is there some coda to Jonah’s plan that requires Jon to be back at the Institute? What else could he possibly want to do?</p><p>Jon knows that he won’t get the answer to that until he’s there, in person: until he walks through the doors that he thought he’d left behind for good. He has to be patient. There’s a smugness to the thought that isn’t his own. A familiar admonishment –– though it sounds more like praise for a well-learned trick –– telling him that he’s so <em> greedy</em>.</p><p>He whines wordlessly, the lack of <em> knowing </em> easily as frustrating as anything his body wants.</p><p>“You’re doing so well,” says Martin, his voice pulling Jon back into the moment. “Just –– gorgeous. Are you –– ready for more?”</p><p>“Yes,” is all Jon can think to say. <em> Yes, more, please, all of it. </em></p><p>He feels achingly hollow for a moment as Martin pulls out of him; then there are two thick fingers pushing back inside, stretching him and scissoring, and it’s so much that his vision blurs. He wants them deeper, and harder, and out of his mouth spill disconnected words to that effect; though he can’t think too hard about the form of them, or else he’ll remember why he doesn’t deserve this, and it’ll all come crashing to a halt. The urgency of wanting to come is starting to pull at him, but it’s entwined with the urgency of wanting to see the Institute, to know why he’s wanted there.</p><p>But he knows that if he looks for the way he’ll see it, and if he sees it then he’ll want to take it, and if he takes it then –– then he’ll know what’s at the end, but what would that cost? </p><p>What more could it possibly cost? He’s already paid almost everything that was and wasn’t his to give.</p><p>Jon hangs there, nearly but not quite letting in that beckoning thought, rocking back and forth on the edge of knowing until he thinks he will go mad with it. He tries to rally himself –– tries to think of a time when he chose not to follow a mystery, and recall what resolve he had then –– and comes up with nothing. And his body still moves on the bed, his skin hot and pulsing with his heartbeat, a feverish pressure building and dashing any logic on which he tries to call.</p><p>In the end, he finds excuses, but it’s really sheer spinning half-lucid desire that makes him look towards London. The way shines in front of him; the distant Institute is shrouded, its form indistinct from where he lies, but visible. He knows that it’s visible from every point in the world, and that every point in the world is seen from its windows. Every place, every action, every thought.</p><p>It draws him closer, the cloaking walls of the cabin discarded behind him. He moves towards it unthinking but willing. The Institute looms large, and he’s only dimly aware of his own body, making incoherent noises on a faraway bed.</p><p>No, not the Institute. He’s looking at the old Panopticon. Like a ghost, he sees himself climbing its stairs: it’s himself as he was before, unblossomed and confused, and as he rises out of something like sleep, the first thing he sees is Elias’s triumphant face.</p><p>Jonah’s face.</p><p>Then the vision clears, and he sees the Panopticon as it is now, and the Institute, and the towering amalgamation they have made. The thing that stares from every window with a gaze that sees through walls and skulls and skin. Awed and undeniably afraid, he enters into it, a witness.</p><p>Inside is a familiar face, one that Jon now knows is just a mask worn by someone much older. Jonah sits on an ostentatious throne befitting a man who knows he’s terribly important. He’s the only thing on which Jon can focus, the only part of the room that’s distinct; and Jon wonders with a sinking heart whether Jonah’s shielding the Institute from view, whether he’s even seeing the real thing at all, and how much more power Jonah has now.</p><p>Jonah is smiling, one hand toying with his lips, the other fallen into in his lap. He’s saying Jon’s name.</p><p>There are eyes all around them, looking inward and outward; Jon could look through them, he could see everything at once, if only he was really here. But all he can look at now is the man in front of him: the man who’s the cause of all this.</p><p>The man who destroyed the world, the man who’s killed and tortured so many people, the man who’s ended lives just to extend his own, the man who’s manipulated Jon from the start, the man who filled the world from edge to edge with the most awful suffering he’s ever known, the man who’s still guiding Jon towards the moment when he can know it all.</p><p>Jon looks up at Jonah. He hates him, of course. They’re enemies. It’s the only right way to feel about a man like that.</p><p>Jonah, his head back, his eyes half-lidded, the smile spreading wider on his face, looks down and meets his gaze.</p><p>With their eyes on each other, and the Watcher’s power thrumming through them both, there’s a change. There’s a sense of rightness to this, the same rightness that Jon has been evading and denying and hiding from since the day he ended the world. And as he exists here in the Eye’s seat of power, his regrettable past slowly, softly, becomes something more than guilt and mistakes. It becomes pure information: trails of cause-and-effect winding back in time forever, some moments more delicious than others but all of neutral moral value, the important thing only to record and catalogue.</p><p>Jon is pure information as well: more conduit than person. As he looks up at Jonah he sees every inch of him; and Jonah looks back, the observation akin to an act of worship. He sees the colour high on Jonah’s cheeks; the shallowness of his breaths; the fact that he’s tense, having to control himself not to tremble. And Jonah sees him, sees every taut and shaking muscle of his body: and when Jon goes over the edge, he will see that too. Jon wonders with sharp, unburdened curiosity whether Jonah will follow.</p><p>“Yes,” says Jonah, and it sounds fevered, indulgent, as if Jon’s mere desire to know has pulled the answer from him. “My Archive.”</p><p>Each part of this moment –– the name, the answer, the act of getting it –– spears through Jon, and all of it twists around him as he comes, his surroundings a confusion of opulent tower and small cabin bedroom, Jonah’s eyes in front of him and Martin’s fingers below him. And he’s speaking, a dam broken, he’s speaking nonstop, but what he’s babbling over and over is Jonah’s name.</p><p>Martin pulls his fingers out of Jon with a sharp yank that actually hurts, and he hisses and bites down on his own hand to stop talking, too late, as Martin stands up over him.</p><p>“I’m –– I’m sorry, what was <em> that?</em>”</p><p>Jon scrambles to sit up, heavily and unpleasantly back in his body: the body with an aching sphincter, and wet pooled semen on its belly, and a deep and growing sense of panicked shame. He grasps for words; shakes his head when he can’t find them. Physical disgust at the mess he’s in adds to everything else, and he folds in on himself instinctively, legs drawn up and arms around his knees.</p><p>Martin steps back from the bed. He’s still half-hard, but he’s flushed now with anger, and his fear comes off him in intoxicating waves. “No, don’t –– don’t you dare. You’re going to have to explain this one.”</p><p>He doesn’t know what words could possibly make sense of this. If there are any such words, they’re beyond his grasp, just like the teased and promised knowledge of every quark and atom of the world. Maybe if Jon doesn’t respond at all, it’ll all go away, and he’ll no longer be in this room, and he’ll no longer see the ghost of Jonah’s eyes in front of him, or the twist of Martin’s unhappiness.</p><p>“Jon, do <em> not </em> do this right now,” Martin says, with an aggression that Jon’s not used to. “You’re going to talk about this.”</p><p>Jon forces out words, but they’re not good ones. “That wasn’t… I didn’t… that wasn’t what it sounded like.”</p><p>“Oh? What was it then?” says Martin, unconvinced and unforgiving. Jon supposes that’s more than fair, given that he just moaned their immortal enemy’s name with something not unlike religious ecstasy. That sort of thing, he suspects, takes some explaining.</p><p><em> How </em> to explain is its own question, when he doesn’t even know how to explain it to himself.</p><p>“I saw him,” he says.</p><p>“<em>Oh,</em>” says Martin, scowling, and his distaste for Beholding has never rung clearer than it does now. “Right, I get it, and you had a perfectly normal reaction to seeing –– seeing <em> that.</em>”</p><p>In the spaces between his words is knowledge of Martin’s hate for Jonah. Of course they both hate him, Jon knew that, but it comes to him divinely now that Martin’s hate boils much more deep and violent than his own. Jon wants to stop Jonah’s plans: at best, a vanishingly unlikely prospect. Martin wants to <em> hurt </em> him, repeatedly, until he’s suffered as much as anyone else whose path he’s crossed.</p><p>“No,” says Jon, though it’s useless. Martin still watches him expectantly. Jon searches again for words, for any tiny flash of insight; he begins, at last, at the beginning. “The power to compel has run strong through Jonah Magnus for––”</p><p>“<em>Shut up</em>,” snaps Martin.</p><p>Jon is shocked into silence, feeling like a string’s been cut.</p><p>“If you’re going to do that,” says Martin, “I’m at least washing my hands first.”</p><p>He leaves Jon curled into a ball, and Jon’s mind chases him, sees his worry and his anger, his swallowed panic; sees his guilt at walking out, soft at its edges from the touch of the Lonely. Jon pulls back to himself, ashamed, and wishes he could stop thinking about walking south.</p><p>When Martin comes back, he’s wearing a shirt and underwear. He’s washed, and splashed cold water on his face: a trick to bring down redness in his skin and eyes, which Jon does not want to know but now knows anyway.</p><p>He’s brought a bath sheet and some wipes with him, which he passes to Jon without rancour. “You should probably clean up,” he says, not meeting his eyes.</p><p>Jon does. Somehow Martin’s quiet is worse than his anger, though neither is as much punishment as he deserves. While Martin discards the soiled wipes, Jon drapes the bath sheet around his shoulders, and feels very slightly less cold and exposed.</p><p>Martin sits down heavily on the edge of the bed, the springs creaking beneath him. “Okay,” he says into his hands. “What happened.”</p><p>Jon takes a deep breath. “I… never actually told you how I found the Panopticon.”</p><p>He explains it, as best he understands it. There was the tug at him, invisible at the time, eased by his own decision to go into the tunnels. There were the tunnels themselves, the way mapped for him as clearly as if he had built them himself; then the long climb up old stone stairs that exhausted him, though the thought of stopping never once crossed his mind.</p><p>And then Elias. And though by then he knew the man’s true identity, he doesn’t remember it stopping him for a second as he followed his words into the Lonely.</p><p>“He called you,” says Martin heavily, and his words join a growing and toppling pile of the things that are wrong with the world.</p><p>“Yes,” says Jon.</p><p>“And now he’s calling you again. Except you can… tell, this time?”</p><p>“I’m much more powerful now.”</p><p>“That tracks,” says Martin unhappily. “Great. That’s –– great. That’s <em> just </em> what we need. That’s…”</p><p>He trails off, and Jon sees the form of an idea emerge in him. He watches it grow, waits grimly for it to be spoken out loud.</p><p>“Well,” says Martin at last, and his tone is pragmatic: “we were never going to stay here forever.”</p><p>“We can’t go,” says Jon at once.</p><p>Martin finally looks at him, defiant. “If you know where he is, and you reckon we can get there, then I think we should do it. If we can get to him, we can kill him.”</p><p>“Martin,” says Jon quietly, “I don’t think that will bring back the world.”</p><p>“It’s worth a try, though, isn’t it? And even if it doesn’t––” Martin is getting more animated now, more sure in his speech, as the idea germinates into a plan inside him –– “even if the world’s just <em> gone </em> , and I don’t think it necessarily is, but even if it <em> is </em> then he still shouldn’t get to live in it. Not after everything he’s done. Don’t you want to kill him?”</p><p>“Of course I do,” says Jon.</p><p>“Well then!”</p><p>They stare at each other, their faces close, and it’s far too easy for Jon to nod.</p><p>“London,” he says softly, and he sees the distant tower in his mind.</p><p> </p><p>--------</p><p> </p><p>“Jon?” says Martin. “Which way?”</p><p>Again, it is later, although no real time has passed. Jon and Martin stand outside the walls of their erstwhile safehouse, in the screaming wastes that used to be Scotland, with bags packed and faces resolute. Jon’s backpack seems heavy, even though they have no need to carry food or water; Martin carries his larger bag with little effort.</p><p>“I –– I’ll look,” says Jon. “One minute. I’ll see.”</p><p>It’s unnecessary. By now, he sees the way every time he opens his eyes.</p><p>It would be easier on his conscience if his feet moved by themselves to face the route: if he was tugged along by some will that was not his own. That, at least, is something he has practice with, and if he tries hard enough, he can imagine that it’s exactly what’s happening. There’s even some truth to the notion. There <em> is </em> another will that beckons him: a summons that tugs him towards London like a strong current that pulls a swimmer out to sea. </p><p>A summons that leads directly to Jonah.</p><p>It hits Jon that they don’t really know, not in detail, what they’re going to do when they find him. Kill him, yes, or attempt to at least. And he’s quite sure that Martin wouldn’t mind fighting the bastard. But Jon still isn’t convinced. He’s still not entirely sure what he wants.</p><p>He wants to kill him, of course. Jon’s a pretty good liar when talking only to himself. </p><p>No. Self-deceit seems inadequate now. It’s as if he’s walking around in the new world, but still trying to armour himself in the rags of the old one. The planet is in ruins; the lines of subtle manipulation that led him here have ended, complete in their victory. There’s no statement compelling him to speak; there was never any Web compelling him to act. There’s nothing to blame. </p><p>He’s forced to admit that something might come down to what <em> he </em> wants.</p><p>Jon searches his own mind for an answer.</p><p>Well… he wants to save the world. Save Martin and whoever else he can. Find out if there’s a way to reverse what he did. If he’s ever had a duty, it’s this. It’s what he owes to the world he helped destroy. </p><p>And what else? </p><p>He wants to stop Jonah, to ruin his schemes, even to hurt him –– to stop him from hurting anyone else, and as revenge, yes, as revenge. To confess to something as mindless and emotionally-driven as revenge makes Jon ashamed, but it is nevertheless true, and in its trueness it is comfortingly known.</p><p>And what <em> else? </em></p><p>He wants… he wants to have died before this happened. He wants to have been eaten alive by small white worms; he wants to be dead and buried anonymously next to Mike Crew; he wants to have died in a coma in hospital, maybe only delaying the end of the world, but at least not causing it. He might have killed himself if he’d known what would happen, though he can’t be sure: he might have been too cowardly to do it. He wants to have fewer regrets, and he wishes he’d not made so many decisions out of fear.</p><p>And what else, more and deeper than death? No desire is truly hidden in the presence of the Eye. Every thought can be cleanly peeled back with time and care, and Jon sees through his god just as his god sees through him. Hasn’t he gotten so good at telling secrets, now? Doesn’t he deserve a taste of his own medicine? So what <em> else? </em></p><p>The answer comes through gritted teeth, but it comes. He wants to see everything, everywhere. He wants to know indiscriminately: to gorge himself on knowing. He can feel the Watcher’s gaze hum through him, the pinprick sensation of someone standing perpetually just behind your shoulder; he wonders if that’s because of his own heightened awareness, or if everyone on earth now feels that way, if that same shudder runs through every living and once-living thing. He wants to know the answer to that question and to be the presence that makes them shudder. He wants to reach the Watcher’s domain on earth and look uninterrupted through its eyes, which are all eyes.</p><p>It watches him through Martin’s eyes every day, and it watches Martin through his own. It watches them both from the sky, an all-encompassing gaze that now begins slowly, curiously, to focus.</p><p>It’s responding to him, he realises: its focus is <em> his </em> focus, its gaze is <em> his </em> gaze. The enormity of that knowledge leaves Jon giddy and distraught with all the things that he still doesn’t know. But at the same time, the knowing starts to hurt, as if he’s peeling open not just thoughts but also skin, layers of fat, of flesh.</p><p>The weight of its gaze might kill him, he thinks with a thrill of fear. Or, since he is its dedicant, it might not. To know one way or another would be neither good nor bad, but it would be interesting.</p><p>He sees, as if through someone else’s eyes looking at someone else’s body, that his breath is coming in short gasps: not quite hyperventilating, but near to it. His hands dance in a desperate pattern in response. Now Martin is taking those hands and holding them still, concerned but not yet trying to bring him back; he sees, dispassionately, Martin’s care and worry for Jon balanced against his desire to find and dispatch Jonah.</p><p>And what else could he want? Deeper still, fingering through the flensed strata of his own mind, with no practical purpose to justify the pain, to no end except pure curiosity: <em> what else? </em></p><p>He wants satisfaction. He wants those moments in front of Jonah –– and this <em> cuts </em>, the light of knowing spilling into him like acid –– those moments in front of Jonah where he felt no frantic pull to see, only the peace and purpose of seeing. No guilt, but the oblivion of omniscience. </p><p>It’s too sharp, too focused, too bright, and Jon finally blinks, flinching away from the knowing as if pulling his hand out of a fire. And like the pain of being burned, he’s allowed a few moments of numbness before guilt and reality slam back in, sending him stumbling.</p><p>“Jon?” says Martin, alarm in his voice. He puts his hands on Jon’s arms, warm and strong, supporting him as he trembles. “O-okay, that’s enough, that’s enough. Did he see you back? Are you okay?”</p><p>“I, ah… n-no,” says Jon. He leans forward, still distant with knowledge and shaky with unfaded pain, and lets Martin pull him into a hug. “I mean, I don’t think he did but –– he already knows I’m coming. He knows we’re –– we’re coming.”</p><p>Martin makes a noise that’s unhappy, but not surprised. “Right, of course. I suppose that’s on-brand for him. Did –– did you see it, then? The way?”</p><p>“So much more than that, and still not enough.”</p><p>Martin pulls back to arm’s length, and gives Jon a deeply critical look. “Okay, new rule going forward? Answers to questions in plain English, please.”</p><p>There’s so much that Martin doesn’t know compared to Jon, and yet the same gap between Jon and all the knowledge in the world is a hundred thousand times greater. It’s a terrible thing to realise that he might die without knowing everything, when the alternative is actually possible.</p><p>He’s a wretched monster for the things he wants to do.</p><p>He’s not special. Wretched monsters and their victims are all that really exists any more.</p><p>Monsters, their victims, and Martin.</p><p>“...Jon?”</p><p>Martin’s voice is always gentler than he deserves. </p><p>Jon reaches up to touch his cheek, and instinctively Martin puts a hand over his, momentarily lacing their fingers before they pull apart. Jon tries to convince himself that this is anchor enough. That whatever sight and knowledge he’s offered, Martin will come first.</p><p>“This way,” he says.</p><p>He sees the undertow of Jonah’s call, and where it leads; he bites his lip. Then he takes a deep breath and starts to walk, his eyes fixed on the south.</p>
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